The hero that Stockton forgot

A park, a school, a street — something in Stockton should be named for Larry Itliong, the forgotten Filipino leader.

Itliong (1913-1977) had as much to do with the creation of the United Farm Workers as Cesar Chavez, about whom there was a movie earlier this year, and Delores Huerta, for whom a Stockton school is named.

Both have been heaped with honors. Itliong, meanwhile, has faded into the ghostly realm that inevitably seems to envelop Filipino American figures.

A week ago the Little Manila Foundation screened a documentary, “The Delano Manongs,” that highlights the role of the Stocktonian known as “Seven Fingers.”

In the 1920s and ’30s, 100,000 Filipinos, almost all of them men, came to America to work in the fields. Working for pennies, they followed the crop cycle through places such as Coachella, Delano and Stockton.

Ultra-discriminatory laws barred them from voting, owning property and interracial marriage. Which is why many aged into single “manongs,” or elders.

But since Filipinos lived, worked and travelled the circuit together, they were closely knit. United. A key component of unionism.

Another is leadership. Itliong immigrated to the U.S. at age 14, joined his first strike at age 15 and organized unions in Alaska (where he lost three fingers in an accident).

After serving in World War II, he moved to Stockton.

Itliong was different. “He was not passive,” said Dillon Delvo, head of the Little Manila Foundation. “He was aggressive. When everybody else was just taking it, he said. 'No! You have to fight this!'”

Bold, cigar-chomping and anything but a bachelor — depending on the source he was married four to six times — Itliong organized strikes up and down California.

These were old-school, turbulent strikes. Cops beat strikers. Strikers burned down farmers’ barns and beat scabs. But usually strikes resulted in modest raises for workers, though not contracts with provisions such as overtime pay or policies for respite during 100-degree heat.

This seasoned, militant unionism is what Itliong and the other aging manongs brought to the Delano grape strike of 1965. Though many people believe Cesar Chavez called that strike, it was Itliong’s Filipino farm workers’ union that did.

The manongs could have retreated into retirement. But Itliong convinced the older men to stake everything on a just fight for fair treatment.

By the way, the amount of money at issue was a raise from $1.20 to $1.40 an hour.

Until Delano, growers played Filipinos off against Mexican farm workers. If one struck, growers paid the other to cross the picket lines.

Itliong went to Chavez, head of the mostly Mexican National Farm Workers Association, and convinced him to stand with the Filipinos.

History records that Chavez thought his union was not ready to strike. Itliong steeled him for battle.

Partnering with Itliong (and, in his own union, another Stockotnian, Huerta), Chavez conducted the strike brilliantly, using nonviolence, a 300-mile march to Sacramento and a national grape boycott over a grueling 5-year campaign that ended in success.

Table grape growers signed their first union contracts, granting workers better pay, benefits, and protections. The two unions merged to form the United Farm Workers with Chavez at the helm and Itliong second in command.

“They fought to be treated as Americans,” said Delvo. “I think for every race and culture that comes into America there’s a generation that has to sacrifice to benefit those that come after them. This is our story.”

Itliong was a key player in one of the largest social justice movements in American history. There’s a school named for him in Southern California, a mural depicting him at a state university, and at least one city, Carson, that observes Larry Itliong Day.

And in Stockton … nothing. This city should awake from its municipal amnesia and rectify that slight.

Contact columnist Michael Fitzgerald at (209) 546-8270 or michaelf@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/fitzgeraldblog and on Twitter @Stocktonopolis.